KOCHI: The currency ban has taken a heavy toll on daily wage earners in rural areas. With no one to hire them due to the acute cash crunch, daily workers and their families are in penury. Though the situation is better in the city where there are big construction projects, village workers have no work and therefore have no money even to buy essential goods.

“Initially, the workers were given old currencies as wages and they had to go to banks everyday and stand in long queues to get fresh notes. It is the poor who do not have bank accounts, work on daily wages and keep money in their homes who are the worst affected. I have seen poor parents who cannot even send their children to schools or colleges as they have run out of money,” said Shajan M.P, a social activist from Puthanvelikara, a remote village.

Employers are unable to dispense wages, Rs 700 to Rs 800 for the mason and Rs 500 to Rs 600 for the-ir assistants in Rs 100 notes. As the construction sites of big realty groups are still working, though not on a full scale, workers in the urban areas are getting wages. “I have asked my domestic help, who I pay weekly to come only two days a week till the currency crisis is settled. And these days I only spend on minimum needs,” said Bhavani Balan, a housewife. There are thousands of farmers and small scale merchants in rural areas who have accounts only with cooperative societies and not scheduled banks. Their financial transactions have been completely disrupted.